Dementium: The Ward

About Dementium: The Ward

Dementium: The Ward was the first game by Renegade Kid, released on the Nintendo DS in October 2007 and, according to its makers' history, first pitched as a Silent Hill game for the DS. After the studio closed, Jools Watsham's studio Atooi took over the game and remastered it for Nintendo Switch in 2023, PlayStation 4 and 5 in 2024 and PC on Steam in October 2025.

You play William Redmoor, who wakes in a medical ward with no memory. The hospital is abandoned, blood-smeared and crawling with creatures. Starting with only a flashlight and a nightstick, you make your way down from the seventh floor, finding a revolver and other weapons as you go, solving puzzles and fighting what lives in the wards. Newspaper clippings and staff notes suggest the police think Redmoor murdered his wife, and visions of a little girl and a man in black who calls himself the Doctor follow him.

Here's the catch that makes it tense. You can hold the flashlight or a weapon, never both. So you walk into a dark room with the light up, hear something, and have to choose. Nintendo Life's reviewer found the enemies themselves fairly simple, mostly rushing at you, and called the floors a bit samey, which is why the map matters. The newer versions mark the save rooms on it.

It's short. Plan on three or four hours for a first run. On PC you get support up to 4K plus retro 240p and CRT scan-line modes, if you'd like it to look the way it did on a DS screen, and it plays with a controller.

It suits players who like first-person horror shooters such as Doom 3 and the older Silent Hill games, and anyone curious about one of the DS's best-known horror games.

How to play Dementium: The Ward

1. Explore the hospital floor by floor in first person, using your flashlight to see.
2. Fight the creatures with the nightstick at first, then the revolver and other weapons you find.
3. Read the newspaper clippings and staff notes to piece together who you are.
4. Solve the puzzles that open the way to the next floor.
5. Find the exit and escape the hospital.

Tips

• Light up each room before you walk in. Most creatures wait in the dark, and you can't swing or shoot while the flashlight is out.
• Save your bullets for the tougher creatures and use the nightstick on the small ones.
• Open the map often. The floors look alike, and the map shows where the save rooms are.
• Try the retro display mode once if you want to see how it looked on the DS.

Questions